


Holding onto Stars

by boombangbing



Series: Flew Away [2]
Category: Incredible Hulk (2008), The Avengers (2012), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Comic Book Science, Cunnilingus, F/M, Past Abuse, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-09
Updated: 2013-01-09
Packaged: 2017-11-24 09:12:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/632779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boombangbing/pseuds/boombangbing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jane, Bruce, and Erik go to the desert to test out the Einstein-Rosen Bridge, which means that, just maybe, she's finally going to see Thor again. </p><p>She might be a little less excited about this than she expected to be, three years ago.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Holding onto Stars

It's been a long time since Jane's woken up with a man in her bed, especially on more than one occasion with the same guy. Don was the first steady, move in together, meet the parents, boyfriend that she ever had. She'd had some one night stands, some blind dates, one intense two and a half month relationship at Nasa Academy that was purely intellectual, but Don was the first guy that she thought might go the distance. And it did, like a twelve hour plane ride that you're travel sick for six hours on.

Bruce mumbles something into the pillow, clutching tightly at it, then huffs, his cheek blowing out. He sleeps kind of like a child, she thinks, making funny little sounds, face twitching, curled up in his protective ball. It doesn't help that his hair gets so messed up when he's sleeping, though the grey offsets the image somewhat.

She's not sure that 'like a child' is a positive descriptor for him.

After a month of living together, she knows that his internal alarm is about to go off as the clock ticks towards six thirty. Actual alarms are kind of a problem for him, unsurprisingly, so he relies on the fact that he tends to wake up early. She isn't sure what she's going to do when she needs to set an alarm, but so far it's been okay, since she can get to the lab whenever she wants and she's an early riser too.

Bruce shifts, scratching his nose, and snuffles into the pillow before his eyes slowly flicker open. She watches his face as he wakes; maybe it's bad to find it fascinating, but 'the other guy' is so much closer to the surface when he's half asleep, and it's just really interesting to watch. His eyes are green when he first opens them, not the brilliant green they are when he's woken unexpectedly, but still recognisably green. She's not sure if he knows this, as he pushes himself up and smiles sleepily at her, seemingly unconcerned. Maybe he's not quite fully Bruce yet. She wonders if going through REM cycles has some kind of effect on the barrier between Bruce and the other guy.

It's probably creepy that she's thinking about this.

Bruce's eyes fade back to brown while he scratches the back of his head, fidgeting the blanket with his other hand. “Why're you staring at me?” he asks.

She shrugs, and leans over to give him a kiss. “I can look, can't I?”

“Not much to look at, but okay.”

“Shush,” she murmurs, tipping her head to one side to kiss along his jaw.

-

She brings a couple cups of coffee with her to help broker some peace between her and Erik. Not that she's done _anything_ wrong, but he's been even gloomier than normal since she and Bruce started... dating, or whatever it is that they're doing.

“So how's everything going?” Erik asks, his tone suggesting that he thinks he's being subtle. He's not.

“Everything is fine,” she says, “and how about you?”

He scowls a little. “You know what I mean.”

“Yes,” she says, and takes her coffee over to her desk.

Erik huffs. “And?”

“I'm just agreeing with you. I don't have anything else to say on the matter.”

“You're as stubborn as your father was,” Erik mutters, shuffling over to his own desk.

“Thank you,” she calls.

In the afternoon, she picks up a couple of cartons of lo mein and takes them over to Bruce's new lab in Stark Tower. She's only been there the once, but she can't help but feel a little jealous: Bruce has this enormous lab with every cutting – and bleeding – edge tech on and off the market, and nothing to do with it, while she and Erik have a couple of rooms in a sad office building in which to create probably the most ground-breaking invention of their time.

She's let up to the lab after a fingerprint and retina scan, and a thorough investigation of the lo mein.

“Bruce?” she calls, looking around the main room. There's a white board on the wall that has written on it: 'Cancer, what's up with that shit?; colds and super-colds (flu); codeine that doesn't make me hork; how come pepper's feet can defy gravity?; create the next super virus???' and underneath all that in block capitals: 'SCIENCE'.

Bruce pops his head out of an adjoining room. “Hey,” he says, and frowns a little. “What're you doing here?”

She holds up the takeout bag. “Lo mein.”

“Oh,” he says, his eyes widening. “Come in then.”

She rolls her eyes and he grins a little. “I'm guessing you didn't write all of this?” she says, nodding to the board.

“Tony came by. He wanted to give me some ideas for stuff I could work on. I think he's slightly unclear about what kind of scientist I primarily am.”

“Who isn't?” she says. “What exactly does he want you to do about cancer?”

Bruce ducks back into the other room for a minute, returning with a fork for her. He just has to be such a show off about being able to chopsticks while she can't. “Cure it, so that he can take the credit.”

“And then he wants you to create a super virus?”

Bruce shrugs and shows her over to a couple of seats. “Well, we have to keep people guessing.”

“Riiight,” she says, digging into her carton. “So, been doing anything interesting today?”

Bruce wrinkles up his nose a little, glasses bobbing up for a moment. “Not really. I helped some sustainable energy researchers this morning, but that's been about it.”

“So what's he paying you for?”

“I have _no_ idea,” he says, smiling ruefully. “How's your morning been?”

“Fine. We're still stalled over the power issue. Erik's still sulking.”

Bruce nods slowly, and leans back in his chair, resting his feet on a bar at the bottom of the table. What an exciting, dynamic couple of people they are. “Is he any happier at all about... everything?”

“Not really.”

Bruce's brow furrows. “I just don't have any luck with fathers, you know.”

She does her best to cover a wince; she's not sure if he just means Dr Ross's father, or if he's referring to his own as well. He tends to stay at such a steady level of mellowness that sometimes it's difficult to gauge his actual mood.

She settles for, “Erik isn't my father.”

“Older male authority figures, then. I just never could make a good impression. Which makes me sound like some kind of cool rebel without a cause, or something.”

“You're tearing me apart, Bruce,” she says, in an awful approximation of James Dean.

-

Since he first told her about Brian, she's resisted the urge to look up information about him, but once she's back in the lab after lunch, Bruce's offhand words just won't get out of her head, and she drags her laptop over and opens up Google. As she types the letters, the suggested searches whittle down until she's got 'Brian Banner Los Alamos'. She hits enter and Los Alamos's official website is at the top of the page. She frowns, toying for a moment with just closing the tab; she gets as far as pressing the control button before she moves the cursor over and clicks.

His biography is a short one, with just his date of birth, university he attended, and period of time that he worked at the lab: 1961-68. She backspaces back to the search hits and skims down the page until she gets to a newspaper archive with a little snippet of an article that reads: 'Dayton resident, Brian Banner, is currently wanted for questioning...'. She bites her lip and clicks on it.

There are several entries on Brian Banner from 1977 and '78. She opens one at random and starts reading:

> _A warrant has been issued for Brian Banner, 38, wanted for questioning in conjunction with the murder of his wife, Rebecca Banner, 35, on Sunday night. There is also a missing persons report out for Robert Banner, 8. Rebecca Banner was found by her neighbour on Monday afternoon, with injuries in line with a severe blow to the head. Authorities have reason to believe that Brian Banner has abducted his son, and they are advising that anyone who sees either of them should call 911 immediately and not approach._

Her stomach wobbles uncertainly. She presses her fingers to her lips and clicks back, skimming some more article titles until she finds one from late in 1978:

> _Brian Banner, former researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Dayton resident, was sentenced to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole yesterday for the murder of his wife, Rebecca Banner. His son, Bobby, was meant to give evidence for the prosecution, but, once on the stand, denied that his father had had anything to do with the brutal attack and murder of his mother. When first examined by doctors after his father was located and arrested, marks and fading bruises across his back and the backs of his legs were found, and as well as evidence of multiple healed fractures..._

“Jane?” Erik calls.

She jumps an inch in her chair and slams the lid of her laptop closed. “What?” she snaps.

He squints a little. “Never mind,” he mutters.

It's horribly addictive, reading through the archived articles, about the trial and the impersonal details of 'Bobby's' abuse. Brian was also charged with witness tampering, but his lawyers successfully argued that Bobby was psychologically disturbed and that's why his story did a one eighty. And they printed that in the newspaper, right there for everyone to read. God.

She can't concentrate at all on her work, and packs up for the day at five, heading home upset and agitated. It crosses her mind to try to tidy the apartment to take her mind off everything she's read, but the place is entirely too much of a mess for her to even consider starting to clean at six o'clock. Instead she grabs a book that Bruce left on the coffee table, a dog-eared secondhand copy of _The Andromeda Strain_. The first week he moved in, and got his first ridiculous pay cheque from Stark Industries, he bought a ton of battered old books, mumbling that he lost all of his years ago when he brought the box of them home. Jane cleared out a space on her bookcase, between Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan.

Bruce gets home at seven thirty, rattling his key in the door with his normal inability to work the rusty lock. She jumps up and heads over to open it for him.

“Hey,” he says, wrenching the key back out. “You're home early.”

“Yeah,” she says, and fists her hand in his shirt to tug him closer. He puts one hand against the door frame as they kiss, keys clinking together, and tucks his other against her hip, thumb hooking in her belt loop.

“What was that for?” he murmurs when she breaks off.

“Just because,” she says, and tugs him all the way in, closing the door behind him. “I was thinking, do you want to order pizza and watch a movie?”

“Sure,” he says, smiling.

“What's your favourite movie?”

Bruce looks thoughtful for a moment. “Well, my pop culture is pretty out of date, but I like, uh, schlocky horror movies.” He runs his fingers through his hair and ducks his head a little.

She grins and goes over to her sad little TV cabinet, rooting around in there for a moment before emerging triumphant with a DVD boxset: all the best and worst B horror movies of the eighties. “My intern gave this me for my birthday a couple of years ago,” she says, “I've never actually had time to watch them before.”

Bruce grins back. “I'll order the pizza.”

He falls asleep halfway through the third movie, just before the mom realises that Chucky is alive. He has his arms crossed over his chest, his mouth set in a serious line, looking very stern in his repose. She smiles and reaches up to fiddle with his hair, tucking salt and pepper strands behind his ear; he shifts, tipping his head back further and sighs. She wonders how hard it must be to sleep out in the open like this, after years on the run.

She switches the TV off at one am and looks over at Bruce, whose sleep has gone undisturbed by screaming women and children. She's not sure how advisable it is to shake him awake, but she doesn't want to just leave him out here.

“Bruce,” she says softly. He stirs for a moment, then settles again. “Bruce,” she repeats, a little louder, “come on, time to wake up.”

“What?” he mumbles plaintively.

“It's time to get up and go to bed, Bruce.”

He huffs but opens his eyes to slits. “Sleep here,” he mumbles.

“No,” she says, and grabs his arm to pull him up. He shuffles after her into the bedroom, clumsily undressing and falling into bed. His eyes stay green the whole time.

-

She has a breakthrough while watching a weather report, of all things.

“Oh!” she says, waving her hand at the screen, “that's it!”

Erik startles, smudging the equation he was writing on the whiteboard. He looks over his shoulder. “What's it?”

“That!” She waves her hand at the report of lightning storms predicted in the coming weeks in the Grand Canyon area. “Fucking electrical storms, God's own power supply!”

Erik squints at her.

“To power up the bridge!”

Erik is still squinting. “That sounds extremely dangerous, with a very low chance of success.”

“Oh, whatever,” she says, turning away from him, and pulls her cellphone from her pocket. “I'm calling Bruce.”

He answers on the first ring. “Thank God,” he says by way of greeting, “I am so bored.”

“Electrical storms!” she exclaims.

“Uh... maybe later?”

She grins to herself and launches into a quick, but thorough explanation of her blossoming plan to harness the awesome power of nature for her own ends. She feels a little light-headed at the end of her lecture, and takes a deep breath before adding, “So, do you wanna go storm-chasing with me, Bruce?”

She can hear Bruce laughing softly. “Yes, definitely,” he says.

-

All she has of the bridge are the schematics, and after recovering from the excitement of her revelation, she realises that there's no way she'll be able to build it in time, not with revisions she's going to have to make and with the resources she has available to her. She calls Bruce back and asks for a raincheck on that trip and he's as magnanimous as usual about the whole thing, in stark contrast with Erik's quiet smugness.

When she gets into the lab the next morning, she finds Erik remonstrating with a group of sloppily dressed men and women.

“Um...” she says, squeezing through the group to get to the door. “What's going on?”

“They say they're from Stark Industries,” Erik says, eyeing their apparent leader, a young guy in an _Adventure Time_ t-shirt. “Apparently we require some kind of 'help'.”

“What?” she says.

“Dr. Foster,” the guy says, thrusting his hand at her, “I'm David. Mr Stark sent us over to help build the Einstein-Rosen bridge. We're not gonna steal anything. We're not-” He fixes a stare at Erik. “-the _man_.”

She shakes his hand briefly, then retrieves her phone from her bag. “Everyone,” she says, as the volume starts to escalate again, and holds up a finger. “Quiet.”

She hangs on for ten rings this time, before Bruce picks up. “Hey, sorry,” he says, “are you okay?”

“Yes. Well, except for all the Stark employees cluttering up the hall outside the lab...”

“The what?”

“So, you didn't have anything to do with this?”

“No...” He trails off and the sound gets a little muffled as she hears him call out, 'Tony? Tony, what did you do? What? Why?', then disappears altogether for a couple of minutes. “Okay,” he says, back on the line, “yesterday I asked Tony if it would be all right to take some time off, and then later told him not to worry because you needed more time, so apparently he decided to lend a hand.”

“He really wanted to go storm-chasing with you!” she hears Tony yell in the background.

“Those guys are gonna help build the machine and, apparently, 'trip it out' with some experimental clean energy to give it a boost – no, Tony, I'm not giving you the phone – and they have a contract for you to sign that promises that they won't steal any of your ideas.”

She drops the phone to her shoulder. “Contract?” she says to David.

“Oh! Yeah, I've got it here somewhere, let me see...” he mutters, digging around in his bag. “Yeah, here it is.”

She takes it from him and flicks through it quickly. She replaces the phone to her ear. “Well, it looks okay.”

“So, are you going to go for it?” Bruce asks, and there's some rustling on the line that sounds suspiciously like he's batting something away.

“Um... yeah, okay, I guess so.”

“She says okay,” he says, to Tony, she assumes.

“Whoo!” she hears him reply.

-

Stark's guys are _frighteningly_ efficient. The majority of them might look like they've stepped directly out of _Revenge of the Nerds_ , but they can get shit done, and by the end of the week, she's got an experimental Einstein-Rosen bridge waiting to get juiced up.

She strokes it lovingly, while Bruce smiles behind his carton of takeout, both of them sitting on the floor of the lab as it gets dark outside. Bruce is polite enough about laughing at her that she isn't even offended.

“Tony's chartered a plane to fly us out there, and he's got us an RV. I had to seriously dissuade him from getting a party bus,” he says, and holds out the bag of prawn crackers.

“Thanks,” she says, and grabs a handful, then frowns. “But... can you fly?”

“I'm not _that_ mutated,” he says. She arches an eyebrow and he smiles again. “I'll be fine.”

-

She doesn't see him all day the day that they're scheduled to take off, through a combination of her every thought being taken up by preparing for the trip, transporting the machine, not letting anyone else _touch_ the machine, etc. etc., and Bruce going to the tower in the morning to 'tie up a few loose ends', and not coming back for hours. She ends up on the tarmac at five o'clock, with the dark cloud that is Erik beside her, starting to fret about why Bruce isn't answering his phone, when the car pulls up and the man himself stumbles out. He swings his duffel bag over his shoulder and waves to the driver as he backs up.

“Why the hell haven't you been answering your phone?” she calls.

“Oh, I, yeah... phone,” he says, patting his jacket for a moment before looking up. “Wow, that's a big plane.”

It's actually a rather small plane, as planes go. Erik casts him a _look_ and shakes his head, before heading towards the airstairs. Bruce ambles up to her and smiles. Jane leans in to study his face and he tips his head back, widening his eyes comically.

“Are you high?”

“Oh,” he says, and twists his fingers together. “Yes.”

“Can I ask why?”

“Sure,” he says, and falls silent for a moment, before his eyebrows jump up. “Oh, um, I guess I kinda am a nervous flyer after all, even without all the... grrr.” He makes claw motions with his fingers, and it's just about the cutest thing she's ever seen. She curls a hand around his shoulder and kisses him, and he just sort of melts into her, hands in her hair, leaning the weight of his thigh against her hip. He hasn't exactly got the build that she normally goes for, though with a little weight on him she discovered that he has rather nicely muscled arms, but he's still a little too heavy.

She pushes him back and smooths her hands over his hair. This close, it's pretty obvious that he's been smoking weed. “So, where'd you get the weed?”

“Tony,” he says, and kisses the corner of her mouth.

“I wish you'd told, I would have joined you.”

“You smoke?”

“I'm a theoretical physicist, Bruce,” she says.

He grins. “Good point. Tony gave me some for later, it's in my bag.”

“Awesome,” she says, and takes his hand. “Come on, we'd better get on before they leave without us.”

Bruce, it turns out, is very fidgety when high, and very, very bored. He looks through all the cupboards, flicks through all his books, and solves a Rubrik's Cube in under a minute.

“Where'd you even get this from?” she asks, leaning over and giving it a poke. It's dark now, but while he was fiddling with it, it was all lit up, each individual cube flashing through a rainbow of colours. The goal, she guesses, is to solve it before the lights change.

“Stole it off Tony's desk on the way out,” he says, planting his feet on the table in front of him and sliding down into the couch until his knees are almost against his chest. “Wow, this couch is really comfy. How much longer do we have?”

She comes over and sits beside him – it _is_ pretty comfortable – and checks her watch. “About four hours.”

“So, we've been flying for an hour? Feels like longer.”

“If you're high, sure.”

“Hey,” he says weakly, glancing over Erik.

Erik lifts his eyes from his book. “You think I don't know you're high? I'm European.”

“Oh,” Bruce murmurs, and turns his attention to his fingernails. “I feel like a teenager again,” he mumbles.

She grins and slides down next to him. He tips his head towards her shoulders and squints at the Kindle in her hand.

“Can you even see anything right now?” she asks, pushing loose curls from his face.

He squints harder. “Mm... No. Not a thing. Where're my glasses?”

“I don't know, you weren't wearing them when you arrived. Maybe they're in your bag?”

“I hope so...” He snuggles against her side and sighs. She amends her list of behaviour that Bruce displays while high to include: affectionate.

-

They spend the first night in the nicest hotel Jane has ever been in, though she doesn't really get the opportunity to appreciate it fully. Bruce is out like a light as soon as he hits the bed, his cheek pillowed against his hand, one leg stretched out, and Erik retreats to his room, saying something about minibars.

She does make use of the jacuzzi, though, trying every setting multiple times and giving herself a sloppy pedicure with some of the supplies that she finds in a drawer. Her feet arguably look worse than before, but they feel nice, at least.

They have an early start the next morning, so she pulls on her fuzzy pyjama bottoms and her _Islands of Adventure_ t-shirt at ten, and gets into bed, squirming under the covers with Bruce on top beside her.

She wakes up with Bruce's knees pressed into her back, his arm snaked around her side and clutching at her shoulder. It's the closest they've got to spooning so far, but it's a little more uncomfortable than what she's used to.

“Bruce,” she murmurs, shifting around. He mutters irritably, and stretches out his legs, flattening himself against her back, the two of them still separated by the blanket. She takes his hand from her shoulder and presses it between her own. She guesses it's still early, she could sleep for another couple of hours.

-

Colorado has uncommonly good weather their first day out. She watches the barometer intently until it starts to get dark outside, before admitting to herself that clear skies and balmy weather means there's not going to be any sudden lightning storms. She pouts at the machine for a while, then grabs a couple of folding chairs and the cooler.

“Wanna go sit on the roof?” she asks Bruce, who's scribbling something in his notebook.

He peers over the top, eyebrows climbing. “Sure.”

The stars are out in full in the cloudless sky, and she can't help but wonder after Thor's star, trillions of parsecs away, outside of observable space. She doesn't even have a star to gaze at and think of him.

“I feel like I should say something profound,” Bruce says in his soft voice. “'I sound my barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world', or something.”

“Like in that movie,” she says.

“Yeah.”

“My eighth grade teacher was obsessed with that movie, we wrote a report on it instead of _Wuthering Heights_. The principal was pissed.”

“Eighth grade?” he repeats.

“Yeah. It came out when I was in third grade though.”

Bruce leans his head back in his chair. “Me and Betty went to see it the day it was released, for our two year anniversary. I was twenty.”

She laughs. “Such an old man.”

He groans a little. “Don't remind me.”

“What, are you having a mid-life crisis?”

“I have so many crises,” he says, “I really don't have the time for one so self-indulgent.”

She rolls her eyes. He's totally having a mid-life crisis. “Beer?”

“Oh, I don't think _that's_ a good idea. Apparently alcohol makes me confess horrible things to you.”

Half of his face is in shadow, and the light she can see by is faint, coming from the hatch in the roof. But still, she thinks she can see that self-deprecating quirk of his mouth. She tries to keep her tone light.

“Yeah? Going to confess your secret double life as an orc, or something?”

Bruce chuckles. “I used to love _World of Warcraft_. I was a level... forty night elf? That sounds about right.”

“You don't play any more?”

“Well, being on the run sorta impacted my gaming,” he says, and she's glad it's dark, because that way he can't see her blush. Jeez, what a stupid question. “Also,” he adds, “once you become your own alter-ego, it's not really as much fun any more.”

“Yeah...” She leans over and retrieves a beer from the cooler; maybe he doesn't want one, but she sure needs one now. “I'm one of the undead. I haven't played in months though, I've been too busy with the bridge.”

“Makes sense,” he says, nodding. “God, we really are nerds.”

“Geek pride,” she says, waving her bottle a little, spilling some of it. “Shit...”

“What are you two doing up there?” Erik calls, sticking his head out of the hatch a moment later. “Are you making out?”

She laughs. “Grab a chair, grumpy. We're talking about MMORPGs.”

“Kids,” Erik mutters. “I remember when text adventures were cutting edge.”

“Oh my God,” Bruce murmurs, covering his face with his hands. “So do I.”

-

Sleeping arrangements are awkward. There are two beds in the RV, one slightly bigger than the other, but they're both tucked away in little alcoves, and they're just all at very close quarters with each other.

“This is awkward,” Bruce mutters, shifting around under the blankets. Jane leans over him and tugs the curtains closed.

“Erik's a heavy sleeper,” she says, “it'll be fine.”

He hums, looking unconvinced.

“He does snore a bit, though.”

“Oh, good,” he murmurs, “I love room mates who snore.”

Jane dreams about Asgard. She dreams about Thor in Don's old clothes, about his drawings in her notebook, about the bright flash of light that took him away and didn't bring him back.

She wakes with Bruce's face pressed against her chest, his fingers twisted in the fabric of her t-shirt, Erik's freight train rumble in the background.

-

They go into the town for breakfast. It reminds her of Puente Antiguo a little, with all its squat little buildings and peeling shop fronts and old stacked signs that make her feel like she's a character in a 1950s movie. Erik elects to stay behind and watch the equipment, so long as they bring him back a box of donuts, which she guiltily feels thankful for.

There are even some cops around the place, chatting with passersby, a couple leaning against their patrol car, drinking cups of coffee. They say good morning as Jane and Bruce pass. Jane smiles and raises her hand in greeting; Bruce mumbles something and looks at the ground.

“Hey, are you okay?” she asks as they make it to the next block.

He shrugs. “Don't really like cops,” he murmurs, glancing back at them.

“Oh, well... that makes sense,” she says. She takes his hand and squeezes it. “How about this place?”

He looks up and around at the diner they're passing. His thumb rubs along the back of her hand. “Sure.”

There are only a couple of other people in the diner, hunched over their coffees and papers. Bruce eyes them for a moment before drifting towards a table against the wall, out of sight of the windows, she notes.

“Is here okay?” he asks.

She smiles as gently as she can; he's not so great at being out in the open, she's found, even in a place as empty as this, apparently. He smiles back awkwardly and slides into the cracked leather booth.

The waitress comes over with the menus and makes small talk as she fills their glasses with water, asks them where they're from and where they're going. Jane makes something up on the fly, about coming over from Portland to see the Grand Canyon, fielding questions with a detached smile.

“Would you like some more time to choose, honey?” the waitress asks.

Jane drums her fingers on the laminated menu. “Are you serving burgers yet?”

“All day lunch,” the waitress says.

“Great, can I get, uh... the cheese burger with everything and fries, and a strawberry milkshake?”

“At nine am?” Bruce says, startling her a little – he hasn't said a word for the entire conversation with the waitress, barely looked up from his menu, even.

“Oh, that's just the tip of the poor nutrition iceberg,” she says.

He grins and glances back down at his menu. “I'll have the same,” he says after a moment, and hands the menu back to the waitress. “Portland?” he adds, once they're alone again.

Jane shrugs. “That's where I was born.”

“I didn't know that.”

“Yeah, we lived there until I was seven and my dad got the position at Culver. My mom moved back a few years ago.”

“Oh, so after that you lived in... Virginia, I guess?”

“Yeah. Mom thought about moving back after Dad died, but I'd started high school a year early, so she didn't want to pull me out. And, I don't know, I guess going to Harvard was always my plan, so she didn't want to be on the other side of the country while I was there. Once I hit twenty seven, she decided I was old enough to be left alone.”

He smiles. “That's nice. I actually... went to high school not so far from here, in New Mexico.”

“You did?”

“Yeah, my aunt and her husband got custody of me, after... you know. I went to a magnet school in Albuquerque.”

“Is your aunt still alive?”

He shakes his head. “She died of breast cancer when I was nineteen. Her husband and their kids are still around, probably still in Albuquerque, but... they didn't like me so much. I was weird.”

“Well, kids are assholes,” she says, smiling faintly.

“No, they were right not to like me, I was _really_ weird. I used wake up shrieking, I used hoard food, and become mute for weeks at a time, lock myself in the bathroom all night. You know, horror movie kid stuff.”

“That's...” She purses her lips. She doesn't want him to withdraw, she _wants_ him to tell her things, because she doesn't think he's probably had much opportunity to say these things to people before, but she has no frame of reference for this kind of thing. She's always been task and research oriented, but she can't do that with this. She has to just let it flow, and that's not something she really knows how to do. “That's not weird,” she finishes quietly.

He shrugs. “I don't mean that they were bad to me or anything, 'cause considering the circumstances, they were pretty good to me. But I just... I mean, she was my paternal aunt. It was awkward.”

She doesn't know what else to do but nod. The waitress comes over a minute later with their food, which saves her from trying to think of what to say next.

Bruce is a messy eater. Jane is too, but Bruce has this uncoordinated grace about it, eating too fast, then too slow, wiping ketchup from his face with a rueful smile, washing everything down with a gulp of milkshake and starting over.

“You're staring again,” he murmurs.

She grins. “Yep.”

He frowns so deeply at her that she giggles and covers her mouth.

A bell jingles across the room, and Bruce lifts his eyes to the door for a moment before looking back down at his plate quickly. Jane glances over her shoulder and sees the broad back of one of the police officers from outside.

“It's okay,” she says quietly.

“I know,” he mumbles, picking at his fries.

The officers stay up at the counter while the waitress gets them their food, and Jane thinks that that'll probably be the end of it; they'll grab their sandwiches and go back to their car, but then the younger one turns around and catches her looking ('and oh, he is _very_ good-looking', her brain informs her) and she has to smile and nod to him, or else look as suspicious as Bruce does right now.

The guy wanders up to them (oh, and he has a _swagger_ , that is very nice), and tips his head in greeting.

“Let me guess,” he says, “tourists?”

“How'd you know?” she says, smiling widely. She can see Bruce squirming in his seat out of the corner of her eye.

“Well, normally when I see a pretty lady in here, she's a tourist. Not that I'm casting aspersions on the women of our fine little town. Don't tell Jean I said that, okay?” he says, nodding towards the waitress.

Jane can feel her cheeks warm up at the compliment, she always does come over a bit shy when men flirt with her. “Your secret's safe with me.”

“Thank you, ma'am,” the officer says, lifting the sunglasses nestled in his hair in thanks. “So, where're you visiting us from?”

“Portland,” she says, easily this time. “We're just here for a few days to see the Grand Canyon.”

“Well, I hope the weather holds for you guys, we were forecast lightning storms earlier in the week.” His partner calls to him, and he waves his acknowledgement. “Anyway, I hope you enjoy your stay. By the way, I'm Leo.”

He holds out his hand to her, and she takes it, quickly searching her mind for a fake name. Not that there's really a need, but she's committed to this hiding-out-from-the-law narrative, now. “Jan...et. This is Brad,” she adds, nodding to Bruce. Bruce raises his eyebrows at her.

Leo smiles (he has a nice smile, too, she notes) and shakes her hand for a moment before stepping back. “Maybe I'll see you guys around again this week,” he says.

“Maybe,” she calls, as he backs up and then turns back to his partner. She pinches the bridge of her nose for a moment before facing back towards Bruce.

He blinks a couple of times, then says, “So, is Erik Rocky or Dr. Frank-N-Furter?”

“Oh my God, it was the only thing I could think of!” she says, laughing.

“Why did you lie at all?”

“I don't know! You got me all freaked out! I got into the whole Portland thing and... I don't know!”

 

Bruce is full on laughing at her now, and she kicks him under the table, pouting. “Don't laugh at me!”

He waves his hands in surrender, still chuckling a little, and shakes his head. “I guess it's not the worst thing I've ever been called.”

-

She buys a t-shirt at the souvenir shop to go with her collection; it says 'get your kicks on Route 66' on it. She buys a t-shirt for Bruce too, one with a skull and cross bones on it, and the words, 'America's mother road' printed across the top. He tugs it on over his shirt.

“I feel very pirate-y,” he murmurs.

“We'll get you an eye patch,” she says, reaching over and covering his eye with her palm.

“Oh, don't talk to me about eye patches,” he mutters, and wraps his fingers around her wrist lightly, rubbing his thumb against her pulse.

She smiles, embracing the flutter in her stomach – he's not her 'type', he's not Leo the police officer or Thor the space god prince or Don the vain ER doctor, but she likes him all the same – and rocks forward on her toes, kissing him lightly. He runs his tongue over his lips and winds his arm around her waist, tugging her gently against his side, leaving a couple of inches between them, as if she'll want to pull away. She tucks her hand under his elbow and gives him a light shove.

-

They spend another fruitless afternoon and evening watching the equipment, picking their way though boxes of donuts and a family sized bucket of chicken wings.

“I haven't eaten this badly since I was writing my doctoral thesis,” Bruce says, licking his fingers.

Jane stretches out on the couch, propping her feet up on his legs and leaning back against the arm. “Well, stick with me, Banner, you'll see some unhealthy food.”

He laughs and runs his thumb down the centre of her foot, digging into the heel, his index finger brushing against the dry, cracked skin around the edge. Her amateur pedicure really didn't do any good at all.

“Well, I'm going to turn in,” Erik says, wiping his fingers on his pants as he goes. He's trying, she knows that, and he hasn't been doing a bad job so far (even though she happens to think that she and Bruce are hardly all over each other and it shouldn't be a problem at all), but the night's been getting steadily more uncomfortable, and she can't say she's going to miss his company.

Bruce works his knuckles into the arch of her foot as they say their good nights and Erik disappears into his alcove at the back of the RV. She's not sure what to say after that, other than that Bruce gives really good foot massages.

“Sorry about my feet,” she says after a couple of minutes.

“Hm?”

She wriggles her toes a little. “They're kind of gross.”

“No, they're not,” he says, pushing her toes back one by one. “They're feet, they're meant to look like this.”

“Oh,” she says, inexplicably starting to blush. “Well, my feet thank you.”

He smiles vaguely and looks up at her. “Do you wanna go smoke pot on the roof?”

-

He's a deft hand at rolling joints, she finds, even by lamplight sitting on the roof of an RV.

“I was kinda a stoner in college,” he says, lighting the joint. There's something very attractive about how easily his fingers work the zippo lighter – something else he stole from Tony. She's starting to think that he might be a bit of a klepto. “I fell in with a... hippie sort of crowd, I guess.” He hands her the joint and she takes a drag.

And promptly starts coughing. She hands it back as tears prickle at her eyes. “Sorry, I, ahem, haven't smoked in a while.”

He just grins at her and takes his own drag, holding it in his lungs for a couple of seconds, then blowing out smoke rings. After a few more, less embarrassing, drags, she feels herself loosen up. She thinks maybe it's the first time she's loosened up in the last three years. Everything since Thor has led up to being in this RV, with this machine strapped to the back, everything in her life has focused down into this one goal of the Einstein-Rosen bridge powering up and then... and then she doesn't know. She was motivated by seeing Thor again, back then, but now? Now she's not so sure.

Bruce is looking up at the sky when she hands the joint back. “He's up there somewhere,” he murmurs.

“Yeah...” She presses her palms against roof of the RV and sighs.

Bruce looks back at her. “Tell me something about yourself,” he says.

She laughs. “What? Is that some kind of pick up line?”

“If I was an enzyme, I'd be a helicase so I could unzip your genes,” he says, straight-faced for a moment before they both dissolve into laughter. He hiccups a couple of times, and then screws up his face and shakes his head. “Seriously, though, you know lots of things about me, and I don't really know that much about you. Which is strange, 'cause I don't tell people things, as a rule.”

“Well, okay... I'm from Portland, like I said earlier.”

“What does your mom do?”

“She's a nurse. I thought about studying medicine for a while, too, but I'm just not that caring of a person.”

“You're caring,” he murmurs.

She shrugs. “Not really. I get too wrapped up in my own head.”

“Who says?”

“I don't know, boyfriends? Don said I wasn't supportive enough.”

“This guy sounds like an asshole,” Bruce says, and takes another drag, blowing the smoke out through his nose.

She takes the joint back and smirks a little. “Yeah, I'd say that's probably accurate. But still, I'm not great company a lot of the time.”

“Trust me, you are, and you're talking to the guy who _never_ is.”

She blows smoke out of the corner of her mouth and frowns. “That's not true.”

“So we're even. Tell me something else. Do you have any siblings?”

“Nope, just me.”

“Childhood pets?”

“A dog named Rex. I was a very creative child.”

“Favourite colour?”

“Green.”

He raises his eyebrows, as if to say 'bullshit', and she giggles. “Really! I dressed up as a green dinosaur for Halloween every year until I grew out of the costume.”

“Dinosaurs are cool,” he says.

“Dinosaurs are the best!” she cries, then covers her mouth with her hand, surprised at how loud that came out. Bruce laughs, tipping his head back so she can see his Adam's apple bob up and down. She thinks about leaning forward and licking it, but she isn't quite that high yet. “I thought about being a palaeontologist, too, when I was kid,” she says quietly from between her fingers.

“What changed your mind?”

She drops her hand from her face and shifts around. It's starting to get cold out, even with a sweater on. “Well, there was this comet in 1994 that collided with Jupiter--”

“Shoe something?” Bruce interrupts. “I remember the news coverage.”

“Shoemaker-Levy 9,” she says, and grins. “Like you said, there was all this coverage, we followed it in school, and I followed it at home, and I was just fascinated by it. My parents took me to the Hayden Planetarium for my thirteenth birthday a couple of months later, and I just... fell in love, I guess. It was so... endless and full of possibility...” She shakes her head and laughs. “Ignore me, I'm high.”

A moment later she has a lapful of Bruce. Well, not quite, but that's what it feels like for a second as he pushes into her space and kisses her softly. “Sorry,” he murmurs, brushing his lips against her chin. “I just really wanted to kiss you.”

“Don't apologise,” she says, running her fingers through his hair, and he smiles, rolling over to lie down beside her. She scoots down as well, staring up at the clear sky, stars twinkling like pieces of glitter, before taking his hand and threading their fingers together. He squeezes it a little and tips his head towards her.

“I want to ask you, like, a hundred questions about the-- the other guy,” she says suddenly, turning her head to him so that their noses almost touch.

“So ask.”

“I don't want to upset you.”

He blinks slowly. “You'll know if I'm upset.”

“That's what I'm afraid of,” she mutters, then widens her eyes. “Not that I'm... I-I'm not afraid of you...”

He smiles easily. “I know. It's a figure of speech.”

“Okay...”

“Ask me something.”

She bites her lip. “Does it hurt, when you change?”

“Depends on the circumstances. It's not so bad if I'm controlling it, but if it comes out of nowhere... it's agony.”

“Are you aware of what's going on when you're... when you've changed? Do you remember stuff afterwards?”

He lifts one shoulder. “Sometimes. It's like a, a fever dream. I think sometimes I only remember what I want to remember, the other guy shields me from stuff... or I shield myself, I should say.”

She nods, pulling their joined hands to her chest to study Bruce's square fingernails and hairy knuckles. Bruce watches her patiently. “So, you change when you're angry?”

“Anger and fear,” he says. “Mostly fear, really.”

“What're you scared of?”

“Myself.” He laughs. “It's such a cliché.”

“Why?”

He lets out a long breath. “Because I'm my father's son.”

“Bruce...” she murmurs.

He rolls over onto his side and smiles. “It's okay. The fear's sublimated most of the time. Just occasionally it wells up, like when you got to see the other guy for yourself.”

She frowns; she doesn't know what to say, she doesn't know how to fix things like this. Instead she rolls over too, and kisses him, soft at first, until he opens his mouth and presses his tongue past her teeth. He's kind of shockingly good at all this sex stuff – it's not like she's an inexperienced virgin, but she certainly hasn't had a hugely wide range of experiences. She hasn't been touched softly and lingered over to any real degree by any of her boyfriends. It wasn't always their fault: sometimes she just couldn't be bothered with intimacy; she had exams to study for and PhDs to get and research to complete, and when she dated guys in her program they ended up competing against each other and if she dated someone outside of it, they couldn't understand why she couldn't quit studying _this one night_ to go out clubbing.

She hooks her leg over his hip, rolling them so that she's sitting up over him, and shakes her head against sudden light-headedness before leaning down and kissing him again. He explores the backs of her legs gently, tapping his fingers against the seams of her jeans, and hums into her mouth.

“Do you want to go inside? It's cold out here,” she asks.

“Sure,” he says, “we'll have to be really quiet, though.”

“I can do that if you can.”

“I'm like a mouse, remember?” he murmurs.

“Sure you are,” she says, taking his hand and leading him back down the hatch and into the RV.

They stand on the little bit of floor space in front of their bed, ineptly undressing each other to the tune of Erik's snoring. Jane gets Bruce tangled up in his button down/t-shirt combo, so that his head has disappeared into the neck and his arms are flailing around uselessly. When she finally frees him, his laughter is coming in silent, helpless gasps, until she pulls him into her arms and swallows his laughter, kissing him breathless. He sways slightly on the spot, and when she pulls away, he looks drugged, eyes half-lidded. Well, she thinks, he is; they both are, and she hasn't said sex while high since she was a freshman.

He smiles that easy smile of his, and pushes her t-shirt up, flattening his hands over her stomach and caressing her skin lightly for several long moments. It makes her feel a little exposed, honestly, how content he is to just touch her and look at her; she can only take the gentle scrutiny for so long before she starts pushing him towards the bed. He goes without argument, only momentarily getting caught in the curtain on his way down. She pulls her t-shirt off, then her sports bra, and pulls down her jeans that Bruce already got unzipped, taking her underwear with them.

Bruce grins at her crappy striptease, tugging at his pants, a bulge clearly visible. She leans over and helps him out of them, and the boxers too. “Get under the covers,” she says quietly, and he scrambles to do just that as she drags her bag out to retrieve a packet of condoms. She's used more condoms in the last few weeks than she has in the last few years, which is not exactly difficult, but still strikes her as kind of funny.

She climbs onto the bed and pulls the curtains tight, then turns her attention to Bruce's dick. He sucks his stomach in slightly as she looks down at him, and she rolls her eyes. He's definitely put weight on since that first time she saw him shirtless – the only thing that stopped her from being able to see the outline of his ribs was his chest hair – and the extra weight has mostly settled around his stomach, his waist thicker than it was, but he's still pretty skinny. Maybe she's given him a bit of a complex, with the kind of guys she's previously dated.

She leans down and kisses him quickly, then rolls the condom on and grinds against him, enjoying the little frissons of pleasure that shoot down her legs. Bruce squirms underneath her, throwing an arm over his mouth to muffle his panting. She grins – the show hasn't even _begun_ yet – and presses her fingers inside herself for a moment, much to Bruce's obvious delight, before sinking down on him, pulling his arm away from his face and giving him another kiss.

He wraps one hand gently around her hip and mostly keeps pace with her, rocking against her clumsily. She can tell by the strained look on his face that this is not going to last very long, the way his lip catches between his teeth and his eyelashes flutter. She snaps her hips forward, once, twice, grinning at the way his whole face just crumples.

“Shiii--” he groans. She can feel his legs shuddering against her thighs, as he squeezes his eyes shut and tenses his shoulders. He presses a hand to his face and groans into it for a couple of long seconds before opening his fingers and looking at her. “Sorry,” he mumbles behind his hand, “'m old.”

She laughs. “It's okay.”

“Mm. You didn't come.”

She shrugs. “That's okay.”

He makes a squinty face that seems inordinately funny to her. “Switch?” he asks.

“What?”

“Cunnilingus,” he says, and presses his hand to his mouth again to stifle his laughter. “Sorry, it's a funny word. Cunnilingus, cunning linguist...” He shakes his head. “Anyway, I'm gonna do it on you. Y'know, if you want me to?”

“Oh, well...” She scratches at the back of her head. “Okay, I guess.”

“I won't do it if you don't want me to...” he says, looking at her with big eyes. Really big eyes. She doesn't think they used to be that big...

“No, I just...” She lowers her voice. “I've never... done _that_ with someone.”

“Oh, well, I'm told I'm really good at it?”

“Okay,” she says, and ungracefully gets off him, lying down back on the bed, feeling exposed and excited in pretty much equal measure. Bruce pulls the condom off, fumbling around and mumbling to himself before turning back to her. He shifts around, settling between her legs, and presses his palms to her inner thighs.

And she hasn't shaved in a while, she remembers, as he rubs his thumbs against the hair.

“You're sure?” he asks, with a tone and a gaze more serious than she would think he'd be able to maintain having smoked as much weed as he has.

“Sure,” she says.

“Prepare to have your mind blown,” he says with a mischievous smile, and ducks down between her legs.

It's... odd, at first. His mouth is warm and wet and kind of alien, but not unpleasant. Not unpleasant _at all_ , she thinks, as he finds her clit with his tongue. “Oh,” she squeaks, and flails for something to hold onto. He lifts his hand and pushes his fingers through hers, and how did he get so goddamn good at this? He's just as nerdy as she is, maybe even _more_ , he does have twelve years on her, so how come he's already bringing her this close to climax?

She gasps quietly, tightening her legs around his shoulders, and he grips her hip with his free hand, flicking his tongue. She comes harder than she ever has, sinking one hand into his hair, biting the inside of her mouth to muffle herself. Bruce rides it out with her; quite literally, as she rocks her hips erratically against his mouth.

When he pulls back, it takes her a second to remember to let go of his hair and his hand. He pushes his hair back from his face with a self-conscious smile, his cheeks pink, his chin... damp.

“Was that any good?” he asks, wiping his chin on the back of his arm.

“Um, yes,” she says, smiling back a little nervously. She feels kind of warm inside, and not just because of the orgasm, as she looks at him. She'd put it down to the pot, except she's been feeling like this all day, really. She takes a deep breath. “We should probably get some sleep.”

“Okay,” he says, and moves up the bed to lie down beside her. He shifts around for a couple minutes to get comfortable on his side, then loosely rests his arm around her waist. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine.” She blows out a scornful laugh and kisses him quickly. “I'm good.”

He smiles, eyelids drooping. “Good,” he murmurs, “me too.”

-

In the morning, Bruce is holding onto her arm, only loosely curled up. She smiles at him, blinking away sleep, and runs her fingers through his hair. He murmurs happily but doesn't wake.

She pushes his hair back and leans in. “Bruce,” she whispers.

He does that puffing out his cheeks thing that he does in his sleep, and turns his face into the pillow. She kisses his forehead and gently pulls her arm out of his grip, then pushes the covers back and scoots to the edge of the bed before she realises that she is buck naked.

“Ah,” she mutters, and pokes her head out of the curtains, in search of some clothes. She can hear Erik moving around in the kitchenette, separated from her and Bruce by only a thin partition. She grabs the first things that she can reach, her sweater and Bruce's boxers, and quickly tugs them on.

She feels like a total cliché when she shuffles into the kitchenette, like she's sneaking back into the house the night after prom, or something. Erik raises his eyebrows at her.

“Coffee?” he asks.

“Yes, please,” she says in as dignified a manner as she can muster.

He makes it just the way she likes it in the morning, black as night with four sugars and a tar-like quality to it.

“Sleep well?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

“And Bruce?”

She sits down at the little kitchenette table and tries not to sigh. “Well, he's still asleep, so I guess he had a good night.”

“Mm. You smell like pot, you know.”

She hunches over her mug, turning her head to the side to sniff at her sweater. Oh man, she smells like the basement of the house she lived in her junior year. “I'll jump in the shower in a minute,” she says.

He takes the seat across from her, and gives her significant look. It's a dad look, the one he started working on a couple of months after her father died. He perfected it right around the time she was sixteen and made herself sick on tequila for the first time. “Jane,” he says.

Here it comes.

“Are you... okay with Bruce?”

“We've already had this conversation.”

“Not really,” he says. “Perhaps more of an exchange of ideas would be good? Instead of me just feeling like I'm lecturing you.”

She raises her eyebrows.

“Okay, so maybe I am lecturing you.” He sighs, tapping his fingers on his mug. “I've known Bruce a lot longer than you have. He has always been a strange man.”

“You're a strange man,” she says, and she didn't mean it to come out sounding quite so childish.

“Not like him.”

“I'm thirty two years old,” she says, “I can take care of myself.”

“I'm well aware of how old you are. But there are some things... his father--”

“I know, he told me.”

That gets him. That actually surprises Erik. “He did?”

“Yeah, a while ago.”

“Uh huh.”

“Did you...” She shouldn't ask this, this is such an invasion of privacy... “Did you ever meet him?”

He nods. “A couple of times. He was a very... a very unsettling man. He was never outwardly aggressive, but there was something... it made my skin crawl.”

“Bruce is nothing like that.”

“No, he's not,” he agrees, “not at all, but he has problems. Big problems.”

“So does everyone.”

“Not like him. And what about Thor?”

And what about Thor? That's the big question, isn't it? That's why they flew out here, why they're living in a cramped RV, that's why Bruce got a load of pot off Tony to calm him down enough to fly, and why they ended up on the roof, making out. Thor is the root cause of all of this.

She shrugs. “I don't know. Thor... was a whirlwind, I've never had anything like before, but I feel... very comfortable with Bruce. I'm not even sure why, to be honest. And I've never had that before, either.”

Erik nods. “I just worry about you,” he says. “Bruce is quite a bit older than you, and he's gone through a lot things that you haven't, that I hope you never do.”

“I know, I know,” she says, running her fingers through her hair. “I don't know what I'm going to do, honestly.”

“Well, you're going to have to--” Erik starts, as Bruce shuffles in.

“Hey,” he murmurs, flopping down on the chair next to her, face planting into the table, mostly for her benefit, she thinks, because he turns his head to one side slightly and smiles when she laughs. If he's heard anything they've said, he doesn't let on.

“Coffee?” she asks.

“Please,” he mumbles.

“I'll be working on the computer in there,” Erik says, glancing at Bruce's curly head for a moment before leaving. Bruce blindly raises a hand to wave at him.

Jane spoons out some of the coffee Erik made and mixes some milk in, then sets it down next to Bruce's head and pushes her fingers through his hair. He hums happily and looks up at her.

“Hey,” he says again, and she lets her fingers slide out of his hair and down his neck before she sits back down beside him. He takes a sip of coffee and grimaces. “Gah,” he spits, “that's like sludge.”

She shrugs. “That's how I like it. How'd you sleep?”

“Like a log,” he says. “You?”

“Pretty good. I smell like a frat house, though.”

“You smell fine to me,” he says, braving another sip of the coffee.

She smiles. “Well, I think there's a reason for that.”

“Yeah...” He picks a little at his nails, chewing at the corner of his mouth. “I didn't do anything... embarrassing, did I?”

“Of course not,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Why, did I?”

“No! No, uh... it was nice last night, wasn't it?” He asks it like he needs the reassurance, like he thinks he might have overstepped some invisible boundary. She kind of wants to ask if it was eating her out that's got him a little nervous, but she's never been someone who blurts out the crude things that go through her head.

“It was really nice,” she says, patting his hand for a moment.

Bruce twists his mouth in a funny half-smile and glances at the table. “That's good,” he says quietly. “I'm a little... rusty, these days.”

“Well, I couldn't tell,” she says, her cheeks heating up. “I'm, uh, I'm going to have a shower before Erik yells at me,” she adds.

“Okay,” he says, his gaze skittering off of her and back to his coffee.

She quickly does her teeth and strips off her clothes in the little bathroom, hopping into the shower before it's even properly heated up. It certainly shakes off some of her hangover. She's only been in there a minute when there's a quiet knock at the door. “Yeah?” she calls.

“Can I come in?” Bruce calls back.

“Oh, uh, yeah, sure,” she replies, wiping soap from her eyes, “come in.”

The door opens and closes softly, and she peers around the curtain.

“Sorry,” Bruce says, stepping around her clothes to reach the sink, “I just wanted to do my teeth, the taste of that coffee kind of... lingers.”

She smiles, ducking back under the spray. “Not everyone can handle it,” she says.

“Yeah, yeah,” he mutters. “So, what are we doing today?”

“Praying for bad weather?” She soaps up her hair until suds are falling down her back and thinks about their deadline – lightning was only reported for the next couple of days, and she doesn't think she'll be able to convince Erik to stay any longer than that, he's already doubtful about her sanity and uncomfortable about being around her and Bruce together.

“Do you wanna go into the town again?” he asks. “There's uh, a museum that does um... historical re-enactments of the wild west?”

He doesn't exactly sound sure about it. “I guess we could...” she says.

“It's stupid,” he follows up quickly. “There's just not a lot to do around here, so I thought...”

She pushes the curtain back a little to look at him – he's midway through brushing his teeth, with his toothbrush sticking out of the corner of his mouth. “Are you asking me out on a date?”

“Trying to,” he says, laughing a little. “Never been very good at it, though. It took two months before Betty realised that I was trying to date her.” He leans over the little sink and spits out his toothpaste, and Jane closes her fingers around the shower curtain.

“Okay,” she says, “I love re-enactments anyway, I went to Renn Faires all through high school.”

“I liked, uh, the Civil War re-enactments the local historical society used to do when I was a kid,” he says. “History wasn't really my thing, but I liked the muskets and stuff.”

“It's a date,” she says, and smiles. “Hey, do you want to, uh, jump in here with me?”

“The shower?” he says.

“Yeah...”

“Okay,” he says, smiling back. He washes his mouth out quickly, then pulls off his t-shirt and pants and steps in. They shuffle around each other for a moment, trying to figure out where to stand, until Bruce chuckles and backs up a little. “It's been a while since I've showered with anyone.”

“Me too.” Don used to like having shower sex, but she hated it. She was trying to get _clean_ , not get more bodily fluids on herself.

She passes Bruce a bottle of body wash and starts putting conditioner in her hair, moving around him as best she can. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea of hers. He gets underneath the water while she works the conditioner into her hair – she doesn't often make the effort, but she figures that if she's going on a _date_ – even a not-really one like this – she should at least have nice-looking hair. Bruce has his back to her, and she takes a moment to admire his shoulders. He really does have a nice upper body, strong but kind of delicate, tapering off into a narrow waist with slight love handles. She lets her gaze drift down his ass and legs, noticing for the first time thin white scars on the backs of his legs – they look old and stretched out with time, and she thinks instantly of those old newspaper articles.

Bruce is humming a little under his breath, lathering up his chest with body wash. She shakes her head and grabs a bottle of shampoo. She squeezes some out into her hand and pounces on him, rubbing it into his hair.

He jumps a little and turns to look over his shoulder. “What're you doing?”

“Washing your hair. Do you mind?”

He lifts a shoulder. “It feels nice,” he says. He turns around to face her fully and tips his head forward, letting her work shampoo in his hair. “My mom used to wash my hair for me,” he says quietly.

She blinks. “Oh...”

“Sorry, I just made it weird, didn't I?”

She pulls a face. “Little bit.”

“Sorry,” he repeats. “I just... I don't know, it's nice. It's a nice memory.”

“I get it.”

“Not that I'm comparing you to my mom, because you're not really anything like her and we're, you know, we're having sex...”

She puts her soapy fingers to his mouth. “Stop digging yourself into that hole.”

He smiles and shuts up.

-

They leave Erik alone, again, when they leave for the town. She feels kind of bad about that, because it seems like she's always dragging him places to help her with stuff, and now she's leaving him to watch the equipment all on his own. Erik just nods and picks up his book, though, waving them out the door.

“I really do feel like a teenager around him sometimes,” Bruce says as they set off towards the town. “Not that I got many dates with pretty girls back then.”

She raises her eyebrow and laughs. “Smooth.”

“I'm so smooth,” he says, “you don't even know you smooth I am.”

“Sure,” she says, looping her arm through his. “So, what was teenage Bruce like?”

“Teenage Bruce was a _nerd_ ,” he says.

“Really.”

He chuckles. “Uh huh. Teenage Bruce had read all the _Dune_ novels at least ten times each by the time he was thirteen and was absolutely devastated by the movie adaptation. He was briefly obsessed with the Roswell landing, and I've gotta say, I'm starting to think that maybe there really was something to that after all. And he asked out his first girl via a note written on the back of a candy wrapper.”

“How did that go?”

He screws up his face for a moment. “We got ice cream and made out in the front seat of her car. I came in my pants after a few minutes, rushed home in shame, and my cousin walked in on me trying to wash the stain out of my pants. He teased me about it for months. I was mortified.”

“Aw,” she says, laughing a little. “What happened with the girl?”

“We had sex a couple of weeks later, then she dumped me before junior prom for someone who was about twice my size, vertically and horizontally. I stayed home from the prom and decided to hack into the school's database, _WarGames_ style.”

“What did you do?”

He shrugs. “Nothing. I just wanted to prove to myself that I could do it. What about you, what were you like as a teenager?”

“Oh, ugh,” she says. “Well, I didn't have my first kiss until I was seventeen, and it was gross. The guy got his tongue halfway down my throat before I decided that the date was over.”

“That sounds... unpleasant.”

“Yeah. I dated around a bit in college, mostly guys I worked on projects with, but nothing stuck. Until I broke my arm and met Don at the teaching hospital, anyway.”

Bruce nods and scratches at the back of his head. “So, what was it about this guy? 'Cause from what you've said, he doesn't sound like he was much of a catch.”

She shrugs. “He was a good guy, just not so great at relationships, or... feelings. Look, he was hot,” she says, and he laughs softly, “it was a big draw for me.”

“Why'd you break up?”

“We just drifted apart. He always had a chip on his shoulder – he blew his knee out really badly playing football, so he had to go to medical school instead.”

“How sad,” Bruce murmurs, and earns himself a light slap to the shoulder. “Ow,” he mutters.

She tuts. “Don't be sarcastic, it was a really bad injury.”

“I'm being totally sincere,” he says flatly.

“You've been spending too much time with Stark.”

“Yeah, probably,” he sighs. “So, you went out not with a bang, but a whimper?”

“Pretty much. We dated for six years, and then I wanted to move out to New Mexico to do my research, and he didn't want to come with me, and I guess I just realised that he didn't really care that much about me, and I didn't care that he didn't care. I was gone within the week.”

Bruce frowns a little, and glances at the sidewalk ahead of them a moment, before looking back at her. “You deserve better than that, you know.”

She shrugs.

“No, you really _do_ ,” he says, with a little more force behind his voice than normal, and takes her hand. His fingers kind of twitch around hers.

She gives them a squeeze. “Okay,” she says.

He tips his chin down a little and smiles ruefully. “Okay,” he murmurs.

-

The place is ridiculous, like walking around the set of _The Rifleman_ or something. There's a shoot out at midday that strikes Jane as just about the funniest thing ever – she has to turn her face into Bruce's shoulder to stifle her laughter and they move off pretty quickly, because people start to stare and she doesn't want to hurt the reenactors feelings, no matter how silly they are.

They have lunch at an outdoor barbecue place, in a pretty exposed area, but Bruce seems to handle it well. In fact, he's in high spirits – for him, at least – all day. They eat and chat and Bruce puts away _a lot_ of greasy barbecued beef (Jane kind of wants to talk endlessly about how Hulk's latent power affects Bruce's physiology, but she refrains), getting it all over his hands and his chin. She leans over and helps him wipe it off, knocking over his glass of water in the process, and they both end up giggling and apologising profusely to the waitress.

When they're done, they wander around some of the other attractions, and Bruce buys her a t-shirt at the gift shop, one with a cartoon bucking bronco on it.

“This feels vaguely sexual,” she says, tugging it on.

“My bucking bronco can go all night,” he says, fixing his eyes ahead.

She squeals with laughter and bumps him with her shoulder. He reaches out and reels her back in, kissing her quickly, then more deeply when she digs her fingers his hair.

She pulls back a little. “I guess we should get back to Erik.”

He gives her a peck on the mouth. “Guess so.”

-

When they get back, laughing over all the terrible jokes that Bruce knows, Erik eyeballs them.

“When you said you were going out, I didn't realise you meant _all day_.”

Bruce pulls a face at her. “Sorry, Erik,” he murmurs, the corner of his mouth tipping up.

“We're sorry, Eeyore, we didn't mean to ignore you,” she says, moving around to sit down on the couch. Bruce follows her, frowning.

“Eeyore?” he asks.

“That's what she called me when she was five,” Erik says.

“Because he was grumpy all the time and I was obsessed with Winnie the Pooh.”

“Yes, and then her father started calling me that, too.”

Bruce shifts a bit closer to her, until their legs are touching. “So, I guess you really have known each other a long time.”

Erik glances at them, and Jane puts her hand on Bruce's knee, widening her eyes at Erik. “I met her father in grad school, he was the one who suggested that I should interview for a teaching position at Culver.”

“He was a pretty regular fixture in the house once we moved to Virginia,” she says.

“I'm like her father,” Erik says, tipping his head at Bruce, who's looking a little caught between the two of them. She sighs.

God, she kind of hates when he does that. She _had_ a father for fourteen years, and now she's an adult, and she doesn't need another one. “But you're not, so sit down.”

Erik sighs heavily and sits down across from them. “Did you fun, kids?”

She looks over at Bruce and smiles. Bruce adjusts his glasses. “I think we had fun,” she says.

“Yeah,” he says, leaning back. “We did.”

-

They've been asleep for a couple of hours when the thunder and lightning starts.

Jane wakes instantly, rolling away from Bruce's grip, and lands in a pile on the floor.

“Erik!” she shouts.

“What's goin' on...” Bruce mumbles into the pillow.

“Thunder!” she cries, shoving on a pair of pants.

Bruce pushes himself up. “Thunder... Oh. _Oh_. Where're my glasses?”

“I don't know,” she says, scrambling up and out of their little nook. “Erik!”

There's so much to do and so little time to do it in, she maybe gets a little screechy as they chart the course of the lightning (coming _right at them_ ), pull out equipment and flashlights and hurry to set up the power conductors as the wind picks up. It's just... this might _actually_ happen this time, this represents the culmination of years of study and research. She wants to shake someone and yell in their face about it, but instead she just runs from machine to machine, checking readings and giving directions to Erik and Bruce.

“Bolt of lightning just hit about two miles out,” Erik shouts over the wind.

“Got it! Bruce, can you--” She glances over her shoulder and frowns, then turns in a circle. “Bruce? Erik, where's Bruce?”

Erik shrugs. “Last I saw him was about ten minutes ago.”

“Okay... Can you watch the equipment for a minute?”

“Oh, I thought I'd leave it unattended...” Erik says, raising his eyebrows.

She sighs. “Thanks.”

There's really only one place Bruce can be, the RV, and she can hear him moving around in it as soon as she steps through the door. “Bruce?” she calls

“Yeah, I'm just... I'll be out in a minute.”

She follows his voice to their little bedroom, where he's sitting on the floor, going through his bag. “What are you doing?”

“I'm just...” He scrubs his hand through his hair. “Have you seen the bag of weed?”

“I think we finished it last night,” she says and he squeezes his eyes shut, ducking his head. “What's wrong?”

“Nothing, just...” He stands up and shoves his balled up fists into his pants pockets. “I'll be back out in a minute.”

He's twitching like crazy, though, and not his usual low level discomfort with the world. She's not sure she wants to leave him alone right now. “What's wrong?” she repeats.

“ _Nothing_. Go reunite with Thor, okay?” he bites out, cheek twitching.

“Excuse me?”

He shakes his head. “Sorry, I guess the... the thunder's got me a little anxious.”

“If you were scared of storms, why'd you come with us?”

He shrugs. “Forgot.”

Thunder rolls above them, shaking the RV slightly, and she glances over her shoulder. She really hasn't got the time to waste in here. “Bruce, come on.”

“Just leave me alone,” he snaps, his voice going deeper than normal.

She starts, leaning away from him a little, and he looks like he's been hit. “What the hell is wrong with you?” she asks.

He opens his mouth, closes it, takes a deep breath, and looks at the floor. “I don't want you to leave me,” he murmurs.

_Oh._

“I know this was only a temporary thing,” he continues quietly, “but I guess I was just starting to get used to... it all.” He's starting to curl in on himself, head down and shoulders hunched, like when she first met him, all wet and pitiful.

“Why did you agree to come with us?” she asks.

“Thought I could deal with it,” he says. “And I wanted this to work out for you, and wanted to go storm-chasing with you, but... hah, Hulk's getting kind of upset, and you know what happens then.”

It's not Hulk who's upset, though, she knows. “Oh...” The RV shakes again. Another clap of thunder; she really needs to get back out there. “I'm... sorry. I didn't think...” Well, that's not exactly true, Erik _told_ her to think about it, told her more than once, but she ignored him.

“It's fine,” he says, and smiles awkwardly. “I'll be fine.”

“I'm not... I--” she begins, not sure where she's going with this, but Bruce saves her the trouble.

“Don't make any promises you can't keep.”

“I...”

“Jane!” Erik calls from the door. “Get out here, lightning's almost on top of us!”

She turns towards his voice, then looks back at Bruce. “I have to...”

“Yeah,” he says, and smiles thinly again. “Go on.”

It's like a tornado outside, whipping her hair around her face. She pulls the hood of her coat up and pulls hard on the strings to keep it in place.

“How long?” she shouts to Erik.

“Any minute!”

She tries to think about Bruce in the minutes that follow, tries to weigh up Thor and Bruce, as if they're really at all comparable, but it's like the wind keeps blowing all her thoughts away, and then the sky brightens with lightning, hitting the power conductors, and she can't think at all any more.

Erik swears in Norwegian beside her as Einstein-Rosen bridge, the thing she's devoted herself to for three years, actually _works_ , it actually powers up and up and up until its light breaks into the sky above.

“It's incredible,” Bruce says, close to her ear. She looks around at him and smiles, though he doesn't smile back, and she thinks that maybe there's a hint of green in his eyes, but then again maybe she's imagining it.

“Now what?” Erik asks.

“I guess we wait and see?” Maybe he's not even home, that didn't even occur to her until right now. Maybe he went out to get milk, or whatever it is that Norse gods put on their Lucky Charms.

The sheer absurdity of it makes her laugh, and Bruce and Erik both look at her with frowns on their faces. She shakes her head and looks back at the light.

“We're getting some... interesting readings here,” Erik says. “Radiation's spiking.”

She leans over and looks at the needle of the geiger counter going crazy. It's not enough radiation to be dangerous, but it's definitely _something_.

Bruce tugs on the arm of her coat. “Jane,” he says, and points up.

The light is changing, filtering through the colours of the rainbow as a figure solidifies. _Oh shit..._

He's even more beautiful than she remembered, larger and more golden than before as he steps out of the light in his armour and stands in front of them, drawing himself up to his full height. Bruce lets go of her sleeve.

“Jane,” Thor says, with all the weight of a god, injecting more meaning into a one syllable name than she could probably convey in a whole thesis. He keeps his gaze on her and she feels that same burn of instant attraction, that pull towards him. She pulls her stupid hood back down. The corners of his mouth crease, and his eyes move from her to the others.

“Erik, Dr Banner!” he says warmly. “It is good to meet again under better circumstances.”

“You said it,” Erik replies, stepping forward to shake his hand. Bruce hangs back, and Thor lets it go without a word. She wonders if he knows or not – Thor called for Heimdall, she remembers, because he saw all, so did he see Bruce going down on her last night? Oh, _God_.

“Well, we'll leave you to it,” Erik says, quickly shaking Thor's hand again.

Jane looks around at Erik and Bruce as they head back to the RV, and waves slightly at them. She turns back to Thor. “So...”

He claps his hands on her arms. “It's good to see you, Jane, I worried I never would again.”

“Yeah,” she says, “me too. Well, after your first visit, at least.”

Thor lowers his gaze. “I am truly sorry to have caused you distress,” he says, “but... it wasn't _all_ my fault.”

“Oh, really?” she says, in as disapproving a tone as she can muster. He has the good sense to look chastened.

“Yes, well,” he says. He shifts from foot to foot. “I see that you are friends with Dr Banner.”

“Yeah...”

“He's a good man,” Thor says, betraying no sign that he knows – or cares – about her and Bruce. “A bit angry, though.”

“Yeah.”

Thor smiles, crossing his arms loosely over his chest. “This...” He turns and motions at the Einstein-Rosen bridge. “This machine you've built is incredible. How long will it remain open for?”

Jane shakes her head. “Not long, _maybe_ another three minutes.”

“I see... I wish we had longer to talk.”

“Me too,” she says, and she means it, she would love to sit down and talk to him properly, about Asgard and its science, about what happened in New York, just about _him_ and who he is, but yet, now, she can't think of anything else to say.

“Well...” Thor says, and glances at his feet. It's comforting to know that she isn't the only one with little to say. “Will your machine work again?”

“Now that it's worked once and we've got readings from it, yeah, I think I can make it more stable. I'm sure Stark will chip in some more of his renewable energy.”

“You know the man of Iron?”

She chuckles. “Yeah, Bruce is working for Stark Industries at the moment.”

“I see.” He lays his hands on her shoulders. “I'm glad that I will see you again. Perhaps longer, next time.”

“Yeah, hopefully,” she says, looking up at him. Wow, he really is very tall, she thinks, and she feels that little thrill again. He draws her into an embrace, splaying his hands over her back, and she rests her cheek on his chest. It's nice. It's very _nice_.

He loosens his grip on her, and she steps back, smiling. “I'm sorry,” he says, “I should return before my mother starts to worry.”

She bites her lip. “Your mom?”

Thor rolls his eyes. “Yes, she's been most worried about me since I returned from your New York. I believe I'm more a child in her eyes than ever before.”

She can't help but laugh, and he ducks his head, laughing along with her. “It's a small price,” he says, and takes a deep breath. “I should go.”

“Okay,” she says. She pushes herself up onto her toes and kisses him on the cheek. “Don't be a stranger.”

“I shall... write? Is that what you say?”

“That's what we say, yeah.”

He nods. “Goodbye, Jane.”

She takes his hand and squeezes it. “Goodbye, Thor.”

He steps back over to the bridge and scrutinises it for a moment, before turning back to her and waving for a moment as the light engulfs him again. He chooses just the right moment, too, because a few seconds later the machine shuts down and the desert is plunged back into relative darkness. She stares up at the sky, and maybe it's her imagination (or just the storm abating), but the stars seem a little brighter.

“Wow,” she mutters to herself. She stands there for a few more minutes, before turning around and heading back into the RV.

Erik and Bruce are on the couch, talking quietly, Bruce's expression shuttered and anxious.

“Hey, guys,” she says, and they both start a little. Erik casts a look at Bruce, who smiles tightly. “Uh, can I talk to you outside, Bruce?”

“Yeah, uh, sure...” he mumbles, getting up too quickly and bumping his legs into the coffee. He jabs his glasses up the bridge of his nose and moves over to her. She steps back outside and he follows, tugging his sleeves down over his hands when he meets the cold air.

“Where's uh, where's Thor?” he asks.

“He went home.”

“When's he coming back?”

She shrugs. Bruce looks confused.

“Um, did...” He looks around, the bridge, the RV, the empty land around them. “What's happening?”

“We're going home too, I guess, everything's over.”

Bruce rubs his sleeve against his glasses and blinks. “Are, uh... did you choose me over Thor?”

She shrugs again. “Maybe.”

“Oh...” he says, and his laughter comes out as high-pitched bark. “Really? I mean, _really_?”

“It's...” She shakes her head. “Look, I'm really attracted Thor.”

“Okay...”

“But with you...” She sighs. “I don't know. I don't know, okay? I mean, I mean it's... yeah.”

He smiles. “Yeah. Wow, okay. I just... I have to say, no one has ever chosen me over... anyone, probably.”

“Really? You think Dr Ross didn't have offers?”

He looks at her like the thought had never occurred to him before.

“I mean, she's a pretty good-looking woman,” she says.

“I-- well, yeah,” Bruce says, getting flustered. “But let's not... I mean, exes, let's just... not, for a while.”

“Okay. So, how are we going to break it to Erik?”

“He was just telling me not to freak out at my inevitable dumping, so he should be happy, shouldn't he?”

She raises her eyebrows.

Bruce smiles. “Or we could get him drunk.”

That's more like it. “I think we've got some donuts leftover, too.”

Bruce smile gets bigger, and he reaches down to take her hand. “You know, Tony said that maybe you'd surprise me.”

“Really? You talked to Stark about us?”

He squeezes her hand and shrugs. “He's the only other friend I have, so... That's why he was so eager to pay for everything. He said, 'maybe magic will happen'.”

“He's a weird guy.”

“He is, but I guess he was right.” Bruce shakes his head and chuckles. “He'll be more insufferable than ever, now.”


End file.
